The purpose of this blog is to share our journey of raising our two boys with special needs. Our oldest has been diagnosed with Childhood Disintegrative Disorder, a rare form of Autism and Complex Partial Seizures. Our youngest has been diagnosed with Autism as well as developmental delays.

Friday, December 31, 2010

Looking Back at 2010 and Ahead to 2011

Over the last few days I have been trying to review the year 2010 and look ahead to 2011. I have thought about resolutions and/or goals that I would like to achieve in the New Year.

Looking back at 2010:

We've had an up and down year as a family. In January of last year, we receied a more accurate diagnosis for Caleb. While it is a much more accurate diagnosis for him - and has led us to many more services - it was very difficult to hear. I wrote about that here. We went through a period of time where we weren't sure if because of the new diagnosis we were going to be without services. Thankfully, we had a great case manager that was able to get a crisis request approved and we were provided the services needed to help Caleb.

In February we received information about a little boy who was in the NICU needing a foster home placement. We were selected for him and he has been with us since February 11th. We are now in the process of adopting him. We are waiting - not so patiently - for the beurocratic paperwork process to run its course.

Tony and I started a support group at our church for parents of spcial needs children. This group has been a blessing to us seeing other families come together to support and encourage others walking the same path as they are. We hope and pray that we are able to bless them even a fraction of how much they have blessed us.

We've even endured two hospitalizations - thankfully NOT psychiatric hospitalizations - for the kids this year. Cassidy went to Arizona to spend some time with Grammy and Pappaw in July. She wanted to ride a bike without training wheels, so they took the training wheels off. She had a bike accident and landed on a cactus. She had to go to the ER the night of the accident to have a thorn removed from her hand and we thought that would be it. However, four days later, she woke up with a swollen knee. They took her to the doctor's office and she was admitted to the hospital and had surgery to remove all of the fluid from her knee. It was very hard being so far away and not knowing what was going on. Tony left that night to start the drive to Arizona and stayed with Cassidy at the hospital. I had to stay home with Caleb and our foster children. Daddy took great care of his little girl.

Shortly after Tony and Cassidy came home, Caleb got really sick. He was running extremely high fevers, sleeping a lot, not wanting to eat or drink. We went to the doctor. She couldn't see a reason for the infection and sent us home encouraging me to get Caleb to at least drink and come back the next day. When we went back, Caleb was extremely dehyrdrated. The doctor took some labs and wa just going to give him fluids in the office. However, when Caleb's labs came back she was quite concerned that his infection fighting cells were basically non-existent. Off we go to the hospital!

Just before Caleb had gotten sick he had a SPECT scan, which showed possible hyrdocephaleus. It was recommended that he have an MRI to rule it out. Because of Caleb's seizure issues, the hospital doctor notified Caleb's neurologist and he saw him as well while we were in the hosptial. Because of this, Caleb's neurologist ordered that we have the MRI while we were in the hospital as well as another EEG.

Cassidy wanted to play basketball again this fall, so we talked to our peditrician about whether or not she should play due to the surgery over the summer. She was given the "go ahead" to play. However, shortly after the start of the season, her knee began swelling again. We just got the results of a MRI that she had on her knee earlier this week and it shows joint effusion (fluid on the knee). Fortunately, it does not show an infection or abcess. However, there was an unexplained finding and the nurse hadn't had a chance to talk to the doctor yesterday since she was in surgery. So it's going to be sometime next week before we hear anything about what our next steps are with respect to Cassidy's knee.

Our little guy is such a happy baby. He is receiving services through our early childhood intervention agency due to the fact that he lost oxygen due to a complication during his delivery. He is making great progress and everyone is very pleased. He began seeing the same developmental pediatrician that Caleb is seeing. We have seen her twice and she believes that little guy is apt to get a diagnosis of cerebral palsey, but believes that it will be a mild case. Only time will tell.

2010 also saw us say good-bye to a little guy that was in our home for over two years. He was our first foster care placement along with his sister. We were ready to adopt him, but because of beurocracy, we were unable to. We are grateful that he is with his baby sister and the family is wonderful, but I'd be lying if I said we weren't sad. We went into fostering not planning on adopting more kiddos, but God sure can change that!

We have been talking more and more about more kids. As stated previously, we are in the process of adopting our little guy. We have also expressed interest in a three-year-old girl as well as a five-year-old boy. There are some issues where the little boy is not available as of right now, but they know we are interested if that is the direction that things are going.

We believe that five is going to be the magic number for our family. We're just waiting on the process. Things cannot move forward for the little girl until they can get our home study done, which hopefully will be done very, VERY soon after the first of the year!!!!

We have talked to the kids about adopting more kids and they are both very excited, especially Caleb. Over the last few days his numbers keep changing. The other he told me that he wanted us to adopt 12 kids. We told him that that was too many for our family. Last night he told me that he should adopt 17 kids and that five could sleep on the floor in his room and five could sleep on the floor in his sister's room. I told him I didn't think the State would be too happy with us if we had kids sleeping on the floor. I also asked him if he would like sleeping on the floor. He told me, "No. Sorry!" I told him it was okay that we just couldn't do that.

Looking forward to 2011 -

I have so many things that I want to do in 2011, but I'm not going to call them resolutions. Instead I'm going to set goals.

My first goal is to read through the Bible this year. I need to find a really good reading plan!

My second goal is to get healthy by losing weight. I am going to take it in small goals, so that it does not seem so overwhelming due to the total amount that I want to lose. My initial goal will be 10 pounds.

My third goal is to get organized. I have been doing well this last week of getting rid of a lot of junk that we have accumulated over the past few years. I am really trying to go digital and lose the paper, because that's been a biggest part of my disorganization. If I can work at least an hour a day, three days a week on the clutter, I'll be very happy!

I also want to get in a better cleaning habit. I need to either do FlyLady or ome other cleanin gprogram, but it's an area that I've always been lacking!

I also have a goal to keep this blog much more updated! I would like to blog something at least every other day!

About Me

I am a wife to a wonderful husband; mother to two. My days are spent as a case manager, managing all of our children's services. I have a blog where I describe our life with our special needs children.